"Inspired by a 1997 real-life murder of an elementary school student by a 14-year-old boy, who displayed the murdered boy's head by the entrance of a junior high school, Gold Rush is the story of a 14-year-old boy raised by his detached, repulsive father in the poor, crime-ridden Japanese port city of Yokohama. Like his father, Kazu is also obsessed with money - hence the title - but is cold and indifferent toward his own feelings and possesses an uncontrollable and violent temper. One night, taunted by his father, Kazu calmly kills him and hides his body in a secret vault in the basement. With his father "missing," he tries to take over his father's business and resume his "normal" life. But as his world and his alibi slowly start to crumble around him, Kazu becomes painfully aware of the consequences of his actions." A work composed of eerily vivid scenes that possess an animation-like hyper-reality, Gold Rush is a graphic, violent, controversial novel of the corruption of modern Japan and its youth.